Last Year’s Man is the pseudonym of Eugene, Oregon-based Producer and songwriter, Tyler Fortier. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Fortier’s music has been featured on networks like CBS, Netflix, Showtime and the BBC. His Production work is also expansive. He recently released new album Time is a Sparrow and has also shared the title track and a new video, both of which reflect upon the nature of time.
He says about the song:
I had the title “Time is a Sparrow” for a long time – maybe a year or more. I didn’t know what it meant. I just liked it. I remember texting my friend Beth Wood, who is a fantastic songwriter. I said something along the lines of, Hey! We should write a song called “Time is a Sparrow.” We never got around to it though and the idea got put away with the handfuls of ideas I keep on my phone at all times. Like with the previous single, “Spill the Light” I went back through months of my poetry as I was thinking about completing the songs for this album.
I found a poem I wrote called “The Patsy” which is a counter piece to another song on the album called “Time Brings Change.” I ended up writing “Time is a Sparrow” which like the poem, plays into the argument that time doesn’t exist. Not just as a social construct but that time itself is merely a reflection of change. An article about a theoretical physicist named Carlo Rovelli called the Illusion of Time is what inspired the whole idea.
He adds on the video:
The music video is edited together from a 1934 World War II film called “Conquer the Clock” and a 1957 film called “Mystery of Time.” I can never remember what I search for to find these things. I thought the imagery was really fitting and adds a layer of urgency of the lyrics.
